The Meta
by inspirationsoup
Summary: Realizing that their monopoly over FPS is in jeopardy, the Mercs must enter the META to save their game from being replaced by Overwatch
1. Hacking the System

I don't own either games

* * *

The mercenaries sat around a table, called there by Miss Pauling who had a very urgent mission for them. They mused over what could be the problem before she walked in, tucking a loose piece of hair behind her ear before dropping a massive file of papers onto the table, making it wobble.

"Hello, Miss Pauling." Soldier greeted her with a salute.

"What is going on, is it BLU team again?" Heavy asked, it was about time he got to take out Sasha for a whirl.

"Or do you need some bots smashed?" Scout asked eagerly.

Pyro said something warbled by the mask that sounded vaguely like a question but was ignored.

"Actually this is something completely new," She reached into the folder and pulled out a stack of papers with big, bolded words reading **OVERWATCH** "our monopoly over first person shooter games is in jeopardy."

The mercenaries recoiled with disgust and concern that now they might have to actually do something other than beat up robots and themselves in blue.

"Overwatch might not have as many items or hats as us, but they beat us in terms of character design, having more characters than us and more diverse ones too."

"Overwatch beat us with characters?" Scout scoffed. "We got _nine_ unique player classes that are completely different from each other. Plus, we got wizards, robots, crazy rocks that make people immortal- we're all just dudes without any special powers but we're still more interesting than those guys. That's character writing done right, if ya ask me!" Scout leaned back in his chair and proudly put his hands behind his head, Miss Pauling sighed before continuing.

"Yes but, from a player standpoint what would you rather play as? Regular Scout or a teleporting Scout with time powers? Or the Swedish dwarf engineer, or the Sniper who can summon dragons? Or an entire class of Heavies and Medics?"

Scout withdrew his hands from behind his head, conceding to her point.

"How do you suppose we defeat them? They are a different game, after all." Medic interjected.

"We must enter the _Meta._ "

"If you wanted to make for a dramatic effect, take a long pause next time." Spy commented.

"Darn...Anyway, I made some very detailed instructions for each of you. For those of you who can't read, don't worry- I made an illustrated version too."

Miss Pauling gave everyone their part and filled them in on any details she might have left out, once all their questions were answered they were turned loose to each of their parts.

It wasn't even an hour later when Scout stood out in the Frontier, an inactivated teleporter was strapped to his back and he held a communicator in his hands. As per instructions, he took off in a sprint towards the end of the map, repeatedly jumping at the invisible wall. After spending some time jumping around and looking like an idiot, Scout made it over the invisible wall.

Suddenly, he was on the other side of the fence, looking back into the map. He looked down and jumped in shock, there was nothing below him but he stood as if he was on solid ground. The communicator in his hands began to buzz so he quickly answered it.

"Hey Miss Pauling! I did it, I glitched out of the map! What's next?"

"Next you need to keep running until you come to a wall of coding and then go through that. I'll keep the call going so you can report if anything happens."

"Alright." Scout kept running, though it did not look as if he was going anywhere. Because he was just running into an empty void with an orange gradient it was impossible to tell how far he was going unless he looked back at the map. After some time, he turned around and began to run backwards so that he could watch the Teufort drift farther and farther away until he was too far to see.

He was still not at the wall of code after that.

"Hey, this is gettin' real boring, can you guys maybe move the record player over? Hold on, I'm startin' to see something." On the horizon, if it could even be called that, a small black rectangle appeared. Scout switched from his bored jog to a determined run, pushing himself harder as the rectangle grew.

As he got closer he could see that it was not all black, green lines of ones and zeroes formed cluttered lines within it. The rectangle was much larger than he anticipated it to be, at first he believed that it would be the size of a door but now that Scout stood in front of it the wall of coding towered over him and blocked out everything else.

"Found it." He quickly spoke into the communicator but all he received back was static. Scout put his hand up to the wall of coding, surprised to find that it was not solid, he gulped before stepping through it.

Scout found himself in a dull, grey hallway with an arched ceiling, either side of the hallway seemed to go on indefinitely, miniature rooms were formed from door less archways that segmented the hallway. Doors lined either side of the hallway with different names printed above them and different symbols printed on the door. The hallway to the left read "MMORPG" the sign to the right said "SANDBOX" while in this part of the hall there was a sign hanging from the ceiling that read "FPS"

Scout began to explore the area, stepping first away from the door he walked out of title "Team Fortress 2" before passing other doors reading "Call of Duty, Bioshock, Portal, Titanfall" at one point he passed by a very dusty and run down door called "Battleborn" He glanced at it briefly, as if intrigued by it but immediately abandoned it in favor of the door that read "Overwatch".

Scout wasted no time entering the game, pleasantly surprised that the door let him out inside of the game, instead of making him run for almost an hour to get to the map. What a pleasant inconsistency. He found a discreet looking corner and deployed the teleporter before talking into the communicator.

"Teleporter is up and running." The communicator made a crackling static sound so he pounded it with his palm. That did nothing so he went through the teleporter which brought him back to his own game, in the base where everyone else was. They were playing cards which annoyed him greatly.

"I said the teleporter's runnin' now let's do this!"

Scout returned to Overwatch along with Spy, Sniper, Engineer, and Pyro. Engineer stayed with the teleporter to keep it running while Pyro stayed with him to protect their way home in case any trouble came along, or that's what the others assumed as much anyway. There they explored the map for a while, secretly tracking any Overwatch character they came across. It did not take long to figure out that they were all heading towards the same building.

"You think they're planning something?" Scout asked as they hide behind a wall, Sniper and Spy gave him dry looks.

"Let's just get on with the plan." Spy told Sniper who was already placing a tranquilizer into his rifle, once it was in place he got into position and looked for a character to snipe. He actively avoided any characters that were robots or wearing a lot of armor, as tempting as it was to shoot the gorilla Sniper just wasn't sure the shot was potent enough. He settle to shoot the most generic looking character he saw, an older man with a mask and a number on his back, he was walking alone and far enough so that the others would not see him get shot.

The problem was, another character seemed to have spotted them and was walking over to investigate. And because this was so Spy could replace a character, and because Sniper felt like being a little bit of an asshole, he shot the character coming towards them with the tranquilizer. A strange looking character with a peg leg, a tire on his back, and hair that was literally on fire, he was absolutely filthy and Spy was going to hate it. Sniper considered this to be a win but he kept a straight face.

"Sorry mate, had to." Was his only response. Spy sighed exasperatedly and took the unconscious character's appearance.

"Just get him out of here." Spy responded before following the other Overwatch characters into the meeting place.

* * *

1/3


	2. Explosive Love

Miss Pauling and the remain mercenaries looked at the captive Overwatch character that Scout had brought back. They had promptly put a bag over his head and tied him to a chair, not even the constant joustling had stirred him.

"How much tranquilizer did you put in that dart?" Miss Pauling asked Medic.

"Tranquilizer? Nein, I just put some of Sniper's moonshine into the dart. I suspect that the reason why he has not woken up yet is because his liver is dissolving."

"How can we interrogate this maggot if he doesn't wake up?" Soldier barked before delivering a powerful slap to their captive. That did the trick and suddenly he was barking and squirming and shouting for a hog, Heavy ripped the bag off of his face.

"Oi, where am I?"

"We are going to ask the questions here." Miss Pauling retorted.

"Where were you on the night of the Kennedy assassination?!"

"No, Soldier we don't need to know that. What we do need to know is what is Overwatch planning?"

Their prisoner laughed.

"Ha! Like they tell me anything! My character lore is almost entirely irrelevant to the main story of the game! Now let me go before I blow this whole base up!" He reached for his detonator only to find that all of his gear had been taken away. Miss Pauling had the foresight to take it and give it to Demoman as extra ammunition, he had since then taken it outside to see what sort of fire power they had.

A phone that laid on the table began to buzz and Miss Pauling rushed to answer it, she talked on the phone for a little bit before finally hanging up.

"That was the Administrator," She explained. "something came up and I need to go right now." She slide her files into a messenger bag and walked away, only to duck back into the room to add "find out what you can!"

"So how should we interrogate him?" Heavy asked.

"Step aside men! I was a prisoner of war many times, I know how these interrogation processes work. True they never worked on me but we are not interrogating me!" Soldier boldly pushed past Heavy and Medic to commence the interrogation process.

With Soldier handling that, Heavy and Medic went back to the card game they were playing in the other room before Scout came by on the teleporter. Eventually Soldier came back, seemingly angered.

"Did he break?" Heavy asked without looking up from his cards.

"I don't think that man has ever been interrogated before, he has no idea how to be a model prisoner! We ought to show him an example of what an interrogation prisoner should be."

Because poker is a lot less fun to play when there are only two people, Heavy and Medic indulged Soldier and per his request, tied him to a chair in the room they were using for interrogation to show their captive what he _should_ be doing. It was largely just Soldier telling them what to say so that they could repeat it back to him.

"You lads won't believe the bombs this guys g-" Demoman did not finish his sentence because he was extraordinarily confused by what he saw, he then looked to Junkrat who they had almost forgotten about and looked just as confused.

"Nice bandoleer." He told Demoman.

"I should say the same to you, saw it on the table, that was a thing of beauty. Where'd ya get it?"

"Get it? I built that thing me'self."

"Really? I don't even make most of me own stuff, ya gotta tell me how."

The two talked for some time, finally meeting someone who understood. Their attention turned back to the other three when Medic announced

"This is enough, I am going to the lab."

"Right, let's go back to real prisoner now." Heavy added.

"Demoman, untie me." Junkrat whispered quickly. "We can run away together and drink as much beer as we want and blow things anything we can get a sticky bomb on!"

Junkrat was the enemy, his game threatened the survival of Team Fortress 2, any sensible mercenary would not take the risk and just shoot him in the face. The thing was, Demoman was really, really drunk so he immediately untied Junkrat, grabbed him by the robotic hand, and took off running.

"Our prisoner is escaping and he has taken Demoman with him, off to participate in communism no doubt!" Soldier scream, tearing apart the bonds that tied him (Heavy and Medic never actually tied the rope, they just wrapped it around his wrists) and sprinting after them.

.

Spy was not happy about these arrangements, but sitting in a board meeting with his enemies was not a good time to complain so he was tight lipped. Soldier 76 stood at the front of the room, taking attendance.

"Let's see...Winston?"

"HI THERE!"

"Tracer?"

"Cheers love!"

"Junkrat?"

Spy snapped to attention when he realized that no one else spoke.

"Right here, mate." He piped up. "Wasn't listening, sorry." His impression of Junkrat must have been good enough because Soldier 76 kept going.

"Sombra?...Sombra?"

"Been here all along." Sombra decloaked behind him before going to the back of the room along with Orisa to stand.

"Okay, everyone's here, now we can start the meeting. As we all know, we destroyed Battle Born beyond recognition and they will likely never achieve a marginal success. Now we need to figure out how to compete with Team Fortress 2, Lucio will explain how to do that. But first, do any of you have any suggestions on how to improve the game?"

"Nerf this!" shouted while gesturing towards Bastion.

"Give Sombra and Orisa sitting emotes!" Winston offered.

"Teach Reaper how to reload his guns." Mccree said loudly, Reaper shot him. Head shot.

"Get on the payload." Mercy said exasperatedly.

"Excuse me, doctor but he wants possible improvements." Genji responded.

"I don't think you understand, Genji." Zenyattta told him, and with each seat of arms, he clapped in between words. "Get. On. The. Pay. Load."

Soldier 76 had long since given up trying to get everyone back on topic so he just sat back down, his desire to lead people had died off a long time ago. Lucio, on the other hand, was still full of life and sunshine. He stood at the front of the room trying to get everyone's attention but no one could hear him. Mission aside, Spy could have just watched them argue all day because their arguments were incredibly petty and made very little sense.

Eventually Reinhardt stood up, and brought his hammer down on the table. Everyone turned to look at him.

"Lucio wants to speak! Listen to him!" Reinhardt claimed before sitting back down.

"Thanks, Rein! Anyway, as you can see here, we have spent hours analyzing Team Fortress 2's popularity. We think we might have found what makes them so popular, let's break it down! Team Fortress 2's has three main draws, the first is that it has been around longer. We can't change that but we are a strong game, once the newness of Overwatch fades we will still have a steady fan base that will keep us going for decades. The second is that their game is free, we're not changing our price. Lastly, and this is the biggest draw- Team Fortress 2 has hats. As you can see, we are slowly adding more hats to our game, the Uprising event gave three typically hatless characters hats and we plan to give every character skins with hats one day. If our plan works, this will amp up our popularity through the roof!"

Spy's eyes widened, their diabolical plan must not come to fruition.

Everyone's attention was quickly given to the sudden explosions outside.

* * *

2/3


End file.
